The UK doesn’t get enough credit for its pioneering work in offshore wind power. They have helped push forward the industry and everybody else will benefit from these advances, in the same way that Germany helped turbocharge the solar industry over the past decade and now everybody benefits from cheaper solar power.

Not only has the UK been setting new national wind power records left and right lately, with total wind power produced during December reaching 2,841,080 megawatt hours (MWh), enough to power 5.7 million British homes or 10% of Britain’s total electricity demand, and also a weekly record during the week of December 16th, with wind turbines generating a record 783,886 MWh, or 13% of Britain’s total electricity demand over the week. But that’s not all. The Saturday before Christmas, on December 21st, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, wind farms produced 132,812 MWh generated, 17% of the nation’s total electricity demand that day, breaking the single-day record for wind power in the country.

So those national records are great, but the UK is also breaking worldwide records:

Britain gets more electricity from offshore wind farms than all other countries combined. In 2012 it added nearly five times more offshore capacity than Belgium, the next keenest nation, and ten times more than Germany. Its waters already contain more than 1,000 turbines, and the government thinks capacity could triple in six years. Boosters think Britain a global pioneer.

They are currently far ahead of countries like the US and China, which both have gigantic offshore wind potential.